It's Not About Owning Data
The PropTech sector has spent fifteen years building consumer-facing apps while the real opportunity waited underground. That’s changing. The next 24 months will determine who owns the infrastructure layer that connects physical reality to capital decisions. Most market participants are looking in the wrong direction.
This isn’t a prediction about which startup will win. It’s an observation about structural shifts that create asymmetric opportunity for capital allocators who can see what’s actually being built.
I attended the PropTech Australia trends panel this week. The conversation surfaced themes that deserve more serious treatment than a webinar summary. What follows is an attempt to connect those signals to capital allocation, along with some of my own thinking on where the panel’s framing falls short.
The Convergence No One’s Discussing
Three forces are converging in Australian property technology:
First, physical reality is becoming legible. Virtual inspection technology has existed for fifteen years, but adoption remained stuck at single-digit percentages. That’s about to change dramatically. CoStar acquired Matterport and Domain. REA purchased iGUIDE. These aren’t feature additions. They’re infrastructure plays. When Little Hinges reports 12 million unique users spending four-plus minutes per session exploring properties virtually, they’re not describing a nice-to-have. They’re describing a new data layer being created at scale.
The 30-minute inspection window has always been absurd for the largest financial decision most people make. Virtual walkthroughs don’t just let buyers see more properties from their couch. They enable the kind of detailed diligence that creates informed capital deployment. Buyers can now spend hours examining a property, planning renovations, spotting issues. That’s not a consumer convenience feature. That’s the foundation for a fundamentally different information environment.
Second, trust infrastructure is being mandated. Anti-money laundering compliance is hitting real estate professionals this year. The industry is bracing for 12-24 months of friction. What they’re missing is what comes after.
Every industry that’s been through AML implementation has seen the same pattern: initial pain, then systematic improvement in data flow. Once participants operate in trusted, verified environments, interoperability becomes possible. Identity gets established once, not photocopied and faxed repeatedly across a transaction. Pre-qualification becomes meaningful. The entire purchase journey can be reimagined when you’re not building on a foundation of manual verification and misaligned incentives.
The PropTech founders who see AML as a compliance burden will build compliance tools. The ones who see it as trust infrastructure will build something more valuable.
Third, the data question is being asked wrong. The panel discussion centred on proprietary data as the defensible position. Domain’s value lies in owning data assets that can’t be replicated. The Matterport acquisition is about owning the internal condition data layer. This framing is incomplete.
My Counter-Thesis: It’s Not About Owning Data
Here’s where I depart from the panel’s framing.
The assumption running through the discussion was that proprietary data creates moats. Own the data, own the market. But I’ve seen what happens when you actually work with these proprietary datasets. The legacy players treat their data like dirt. They sit on extraordinary assets and do almost nothing with them. The data exists, but the insight doesn’t.
Meanwhile, we’re producing sophisticated capital planning advice from a handful of listing photos and an information memorandum. The output is synthetic to a degree. We’re not starting with comprehensive datasets. We’re starting with fragments and using AI to construct the analytical layer that should exist but doesn’t.
This inverts the competitive question. It’s not “who owns the most data?” It’s “who can synthesise meaningful insight from whatever data exists?”
The incumbents have data advantages they’re squandering. New entrants can rapidly forge the data layers they need through intelligent synthesis. The moat isn’t in the data warehouse. It’s in the methodology that extracts value from imperfect information.
This is the Moyne Ross play. We don’t need to wait for perfect data infrastructure. We can create capital-grade intelligence from the fragments that already exist, because the analytical layer is where the value concentrates.
Australia’s Hidden Infrastructure Advantage
There’s a structural factor that positions Australia exceptionally well for this market evolution, and it barely got mentioned in the panel discussion.
The Geocoded National Address File gives Australia a reference infrastructure that most markets lack. Every address in the country has a standardised, geocoded identifier. That sounds administrative, but the implications are significant.
When you can reliably attach data to a consistent address reference, you can layer information from disparate sources. Planning data, transaction history, building permits, strata records, environmental overlays. The GNAF provides the spine that lets these datasets talk to each other.
Most countries don’t have this. The US has fragmented address systems across jurisdictions. The UK has postcode chaos. Australia quietly built the reference layer that makes data integration possible at national scale.
For PropTech and for capital allocators, this matters. The data synthesis opportunity I’m describing becomes dramatically more tractable when you have reliable address-level indexing. You can build analytical layers that connect to a stable reference point rather than wrestling with address matching problems.
Australia isn’t just insulated from US market disruption. It’s structurally positioned to lead the data synthesis play because the foundational infrastructure already exists.
The Strata Signal
If you want to understand where property data infrastructure is heading, look at strata. It’s a microcosm of the broader challenge and the opportunity.
Strata manages multi-million dollar properties through cottage-industry governance. Committee members make capital decisions without training or data. Insurance adequacy, sinking fund status, maintenance history. This information exists in silos, invisible to buyers until it’s too late. The gap between asset value and governance capability is extraordinary.
Matt Larwood from Stratosaurus made a point that deserves attention: “How do I know when I’m buying a house whether the insurances are appropriate, whether the sinking fund has been maintained and things have actually been fixed properly?” This information lives in strata, nowhere else, and it directly impacts purchasing decisions and residual value.
NSW is now requiring formal committee training. That’s the beginning of professionalisation, not the end. The data silos between strata and real estate will break down because the cost of maintaining them has become untenable. Buildings are too expensive to manage through tribal politics and short-term thinking.
For capital allocators, the strata sector represents both risk and opportunity. Risk in existing holdings where governance hasn’t kept pace with asset value. Opportunity in platforms that solve the data integration problem. Or, more precisely, opportunity in capabilities that can synthesise useful intelligence even while the integration problem remains unsolved.
The PropTech Investment Thesis Has Inverted
Josh Callaghan offered a framework that cuts through the noise. There are now two viable paths for PropTech:
Path One: Clear profitability with measurable ROI. Show that every $100 invested returns $150. Prove it. The days of raising on PowerPoint presentations are over. Private credit funds are returning 10-15% with constrained risk. Public markets are delivering strong returns. PropTech capital must compete with real alternatives.
Path Two: Strategic value to incumbents. Proprietary data, essential technology, or new channels that large players need to acquire. This isn’t about being bought out. It’s about building assets that create structural advantage.
The middle ground has collapsed. “First-time founders obsess about product. Second-time founders obsess about distribution.” In PropTech, the customers are not the decision-makers. Agents and vendors pay the bills. Building beautiful consumer experiences that don’t align with who actually transacts is a well-worn path to failure.
I’d add a third path that the panel didn’t articulate: synthesis capability that makes data ownership less relevant. If you can generate capital-grade insight from publicly available fragments, you don’t need to win the data accumulation race. You need to win the methodology race. That’s a different competitive dynamic, and it favours smaller, more agile players who can move faster than incumbents sitting on underutilised assets.
The Implications for Capital Allocation
If this framing is correct, several implications follow:
Due diligence on property assets can be transformed now, not later. You don’t need to wait for perfect data infrastructure to emerge. Synthesis capabilities exist today that can extract capital-relevant intelligence from imperfect information. The question is whether your process incorporates them.
Strata sector exposure deserves specific attention. The gap between governance capability and asset value creates risk in some holdings and opportunity in others. Buildings with professionalised management and transparent data will trade at premiums to those still operating through tribal politics.
PropTech investment should distinguish between data accumulation and data synthesis. The valuable plays aren’t necessarily those hoarding the most proprietary data. They may be those with superior methodology for extracting value from whatever data exists. Watch for capabilities, not just assets.
AML implementation is a timing signal. The friction period creates short-term opportunity for solutions that ease compliance pain. The longer-term opportunity is in platforms positioned to benefit from the trusted environment that emerges.
Australia’s GNAF infrastructure is an underappreciated structural advantage. Capital allocators looking at Australian property technology should factor in the reference layer that makes data synthesis tractable at scale.
What I’m Watching
The panel surfaced signals that deserve continued attention:
Virtual inspection adoption curves. Josh Callaghan’s observation that adoption spreads hyper-locally is worth tracking. Once a few suburbs tip, the rest follow quickly. Watch for geographic clusters where virtual tours move from nice-to-have to table stakes.
AML implementation friction. The severity and duration of the transition period will determine how much value accrues to compliance solution providers versus infrastructure builders.
Portal positioning moves. How aggressively do Domain and REA embed AI into their products? How deep do they go on proprietary data? More importantly, do they actually activate those data assets or continue treating them like dirt?
Strata data integration. The first platform that breaks down the data silos between strata and real estate creates significant value. Or the first capability that can synthesise across those silos without waiting for integration.
The Through-Line
Property has operated on information asymmetry for a century. Agents held information advantages. Vendors controlled what buyers could see. Transaction processes obscured more than they revealed.
The technology to change this has existed for years. What’s different now is the convergence of forces that make change inevitable: acquirers building data infrastructure at scale, compliance mandates creating trust frameworks, and AI capabilities that can synthesise insight from imperfect information.
The panel discussion focused on who owns the data. My counter-argument is that ownership matters less than synthesis. The incumbents have data they’re not using. The opportunity is in the methodology that extracts value regardless of who controls the underlying assets.
Australia is exceptionally well positioned for this evolution. The GNAF provides reference infrastructure. The market is transparent and competitive. The synthesis capabilities are emerging. The question for capital allocators is whether they’re positioned to benefit from the shift.
Steven McCormack January 2026